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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015326">Guilt and Something Sacred</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki'>LSDAndKizuki</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Succession (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Angst, Drugs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, canon divergence sort of?, canon-typical levels of hurt/comfort (not a lot), unnecessary dream sequences inspired by Japanese literature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:15:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28015326</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSDAndKizuki/pseuds/LSDAndKizuki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kendall got away with murder that night. Nothing could ever tie him to that waiter, and it all got hushed up and forgotten. Right?<br/>After the Roys win back Caroline on a trip to London, Stewy is left to reassess a few things. He comes to some pretty scandalous conclusions, and decides to pay an old friend a visit to clear things up.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Stewy Hosseini/Kendall Roy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Guilt and Something Sacred</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Well, we lost Caroline,” Sandy says. “Easy come easy go.”</p><p>Stewy nods. “We said she was a wildcard.” They’re having dinner at Stewy’s, which means take-out and whiskey, not that Sandy seems to mind. They’re in good spirits overall; the shareholder ads, crude though they are, are bringing back positive waves – including a juicy four percent from some fat Irish dude – and Stewy suspected Caroline had only switched to them intending to bribe her way back anyway. He pops a vague piece of meat in his mouth. “I’d say it’s going well, wouldn’t you?”</p><p>“He’s squirming,” Sandy agrees, that impish look in his eye. “She knows how to take more than he’s willing to give. And that little story about the boy couldn’t have helped.”</p><p>“Oh, I heard about that. That was <em>nice, </em>very underhand. I like it. How did you even hear about it? Thought they did their best to keep it nice and close to the guest-list.”</p><p>“You don’t need to be told things if you’re paying attention to the details,” Sandy replies, meaning someone from way down told him.</p><p>“I barely remembered it. Never got the full story, either – you say he killed himself?”</p><p>Sandy chuckles, “No, goodness. Just a drug-fuelled road accident. Not that it matters, I doubt the shareholders took notice, but still. Every little helps.” And that Stewy understands. They’re good scavengers.</p><p>The story of the dead kid snags on his mind a little through the evening, and he leaves it untouched until Sandy leaves at the bright and early hour of eight-thirty. It had barely been a blip on his radar at the time. Whenever he recalls the wedding all memories are eclipsed by the thrumming excitement curdling into anxiety, as he vainly sent call after call to Kendall’s voicemail in tepid English sunny weather. Once he’d found out where he was, fucking destressing in <em>Iceland </em>like some starlet after a nervous breakdown, he was driven mostly by confusion and anger, blindsided by this unprecedented silence on Kendall’s end. Even after their worst fights, even when Kendall would only look him in the eye to tell him to fuck off, he still answered his phone, at least on the third attempt.</p><p>But before that, just on that bright tired day heavy with everyone’s collective hangover, now Stewy remembers, he’d been worried in a far different respect. The last time he’d seen Kendall had been him vibrating like a tuning fork in his room the night before, desperate for powder in that undeterrable focussed way he had when he wanted to self-destruct. He’d denied him, wasn’t going to let a little emotional mishap fuck them both over when they were so <em>close </em>and surely Kendall could see that – but that’s the thing about a Roy when they want something, it’s a fool’s game trying to stop them getting it. His mind danced fretfully over possibilities that next morning, each more horrible than the last, when he disappeared off the face of the earth. And now this story about the waiter, the one he’s getting up on his phone – and come to think of it, that face <em>is </em>kind of familiar, he spilled the wine, yes, it’s all coming back now – it’s giving him severe déjà vu.</p><p>Stewy has a knack for lateral thinking and intuition, it’s exactly what drew Sandy to him. It’s like those Japanese poems that Stewy will only admit to two or three people he really likes: a mountain, a pond, a frog leaping in, these little flashes of images thrust together in a serene little collage. Sometimes, his mind will produce these leaps of association that don’t quite make sense at first, they just have the ring of truth to them. Kendall begging Stewy for coke and disappearing for the night. A waiter taking drugs, getting in his car and driving it straight into the river. A starlet having a nervous breakdown. <em>Bam,</em> Basho.</p><p>His heart is pounding as he scans the ad-strewn article on his screen, reading the words as a separate shadow story starts weaving itself together in his head. <em>Logan Roy offered his sincerest condolences to the bereaved family and visited them to apologise personally. </em>Under that a picture of a sad little street, Logan shaking hands with a presumably grieving man in plaid, and behind him – good fucking lord – Kendall. His face turned away from the camera, but there’s no mistaking that hunted posture. He looks so deflated these days, smaller than his physical space. Now why would he be there, huh? Just can’t stop following daddy around like the castrated dog he is, or something else?</p><p>He plays it over in his mind. There are blanks in the story, murky submerged pieces, but he can see the end of what might be an arm, or a foot, sticking out of the mud. He always knew it was something bad, he just couldn’t quite imagine what. He’s tried to convince himself otherwise to stoke the flames of his anger, happy to believe Kendall was a craven needy little sunflower that helplessly turned his droopy head in the direction of any prospect of validation from the boss, but he knows in his heart of hearts it was more sinister than that. He was shaken at the sight of him at that meeting with Sandy, those POW-eyes and robotic mouth spouting PR nonsense, <em>my dad’s plan was better. </em>He’s been watching Kendall’s demeanour change depending on the nightmare-factor of an interaction with Logan since grade school. He never liked to talk about them in detail, so Stewy didn’t ask. He could imagine well enough the shit his friend was being put through, but he didn’t exactly <em>know. </em>And the same was happening that night in the restaurant, some layer of hell of the likes Stewy hadn’t seen written on his face before, and again he’s been left in the dark, to imagine.</p><p>When the pieces link together into a clear narrative for a split second, it’s so ridiculous it must be true. Stewy leaps to his feet with the awful elation of it, his nerve endings tingling. He goes to pour himself another drink, heads upstairs to get some cool air.</p><p>He has to find out more – get some kind of lead, some small hint to confirm just for his own sake if nothing else that he’s on the right track. His blood calls out for it. Could Sandy know any more details? Unlikely, they were only going on rumours to start with, and surely the scion of Waystar having his – <em>“murder” </em>Stewy breathes the word out loud to himself, finally putting it into the world with all its thrilling magnitude – covered up, makes a much better story for the shareholders.</p><p>So Sandy’s a bust. Stewy’s about to start running through the names in his head he might be able to swing around hard enough to nab some intelligence, when the more obvious answer presents itself and his chest squeezes.</p><p>Officially (to the world’s knowledge), since the wedding Stewy and Kendall have seen each other a scant few times, and on business only. Off the record (to Sandy’s knowledge) there have been a couple more rendezvous than that, just the two of them, both times with Kendall higher off his ass than usual. Sandy likes to hear about an opportunity to get a crowbar in, a one night stand with potential for good results, where Stewy might get some useful intel out of his old friend. And off-<em>off </em>the record, well – so sue him, Manhattan’s a tiny fucking place, and it’s even tinier for people like them. The nice thing about breaking up with some California floozy, or even better, a foreigner, is that when you cut the knot you can each retreat to your separate parts of the world and comfortably get over them or obsess over them in the knowledge that you’ll never see them again. Kendall Roy is inescapable, and it’s not as if he makes himself scarce. There have been parties, which might be expected. And there have been a few late-night drunk dials. Quick, near-accidental encounters that Stewy regretted before either one of them opened their mouth, and that he knows Kendall regretted afterwards.</p><p>He hasn’t mentioned these ones to Sandy, cause while a couple of underhand attempts to exploit their ‘special bond’ for the deal might tickle him, this frequency looks compromising for Stewy, even if it isn’t. He knows he can compartmentalise, they both can, and after a certain hour and a certain double-figure number of lines and drinks, he can filter out the Kendall that betrayed him without so much as a <em>so long, </em>and only see the Kendall who took Stewy to his woefully under-decorated dorm at Harvard to smoke till three am. It doesn’t mean a thing, and if he does try and broach the question, the old showstopper, <em>come on Ken, why d’ya do it? </em> He gets a laugh, a monotonous <em>fuck you, that’s why, </em>or just nothing at all. There’s nothing to say to Sandy about these meetings.</p><p>He’s wondering whether he should tell Sandy about the one that’s coming up, however. It’s a stupid thing to wonder; he can worry about all that after the fact, and if this crazy little hunch turns out to be nothing, he won’t have to worry at all. Maybe if he tells, Sandy’ll have a suggestion for what to do and say to get the most out of this barely-there lead – actually, maybe he’ll suggest he doesn’t go at all. Stewy rationalises it all to himself in his roof garden, the just-past-sunset sky hanging calmly blue over the city.</p><p>All these thoughts about Sandy are him trying to talk himself out of going over to Kendall’s and subjecting them both to one of their wretched attempts at conversation while he’s barely two drinks deep. They’re the part of him that understands patience and caution, the part that Kendall so thoroughly lacks. But tonight, there’s a strip of magnesium burning away inside, hot with excitement or anger or both, the proximity to finally, <em>finally </em>finding out what happened for real. Will Kendall tell him, probably not. But that doesn’t matter: Stewy knows his tells.</p><p>--</p><p>“Ever hear of calling ahead?”</p><p>“Why take away the element of surprise? I was just in the area, thought I’d drop by. All my cokehead friends are busy tonight. You gonna let me in?” He’s prepared for Kendall to shut the door in his face. Wouldn’t be the first time, and hey, nothing lost. At least he can say he tried.</p><p>Kendall doesn’t shut the door. He’s clearly been sitting in his apartment in the dark, it frames him ghoulishly now, his pale face and bleary eyes blinking dully at Stewy who is light on the balls of his feet in this corridor. He looks bad – worse than usual, Stewy would be inclined to say, and you’d have to take his word for how that can be possible – his eye-bags are like stones under his cheeks, he reeks of liquor like he’s been drinking solidly for hours already and even though Stewy is right there, surprise visit from his worst frenemy, there’s barely a flicker in his eyes to suggest this means anything to him at all. It’s awkward; Stewy feels like he misjudged a party’s dress-code and overdid his outfit.</p><p>Then again, whatever doom-laden altered state he’s found Kendall in right now turns out to be the right one for gaining passage into the penthouse. Kendall doesn’t even ask him why he’s really here, he just silently heads back inside with the door open behind him, like he couldn’t care less whether Stewy follows him in or not. Weird, that almost stings.</p><p>He flicks the lights on when he comes in, cause fuck Kendall’s emo mood-setting, he needs brightness for scanning micro-expressions. Neat vodka seems to be the flavour for the night, two bottles stood up on the coffee table, one empty and the other getting there. No tell-tale white stains, though, which might account for the rough and sluggish kind of fucked-up Kendall’s being. “Wanna spice up that liquid dinner at all?” Stewy asks. “Something white and shiny maybe?”</p><p>“Did you bring any along?”</p><p>“Did I bring any, like you’re all fresh out.” He takes out the little sachet and settles himself in on the sofa. Cutting the lines gives him something to do with his hands while Kendall sits at the far end, his hunched form weirdly gargoyle-esque in Stewy’s peripheral vision. “So, what’s up with you?”</p><p>“Oh you know. Just a quiet night in. Wasn’t expecting visitors.”</p><p>It’s a little harder slipping into their usual mild rapport with only Kendall fully fucked up, but after a line and a few scotches which he has Kendall go and get for him because Stewy’s just not quite depressed enough for straight vodka tonight, he’s lubricated enough for it to work. He pings thoughts and questions off Kendall, harmless shop talk for the most part, a little reminiscing, and the occasional necessary snide comment for flavour. Their usual fare. Kendall, who looked like a human-shaped rainstorm when he got here, is starting to relax despite himself, cracking smiles that aren’t strong enough to penetrate whatever ghastly film is clouding up his eyes, but a few drinks later his body language has opened right up, like he’s forgotten any reason Stewy shouldn’t be hanging out with him right now. And though Stewy’s getting into the atmosphere himself, now is not the time to lose focus. It takes a deadly amount of spirits to get Kendall truly incoherent-drunk, but Stewy’s hoping to get him to the nearest feasible place, where he gets emotionally labile and suggestible. So when Kendall’s eyes are taking on that faraway shine, when he can tell the membranes are thinning, he chooses that moment to strike.</p><p>“Hope we didn’t rain on your trip too much with that little story. That wasn’t my call, you know.”</p><p>The effect is immediate, much more noticeable than if he’d opened with this. Kendall’s loose demeanour hardens right up. “Well, that’s nice to hear.”</p><p>They’ve avoided even discussing the takeover so far. That response may not mean anything in particular, just a natural tensing up at the reminder of the no-man’s land they’re drinking themselves stupid in. Stewy believes strongly in the scientific method, so he pushes further, allowing a little more callousness to seep in. “A little icky, wasn’t it? I don’t like corpses on the table while I’m wining and dining, you know what I mean.”</p><p>Kendall puts his glass of alcohol-drenched ice cubes on the table, the motion bringing his face into shadow, and hiding whatever reaction that caused in him. “Why are we talking about this?”</p><p>“Oh, no reason in particular. I just know your dad can take it out on you when his feathers are ruffled, and well, this was quite a ruffling on Sandy’s part.”</p><p>“Well, tell Sandy he’ll have to try harder next time. He didn’t take anything out on me.” He smiles briefly, and his face has gone back to its inscrutable placidity he can sometimes pull off, usually when high as balls, or in this case far gone enough on drink. So it’s not going to be as easy as just referencing the event indirectly like that. That’s fine; Stewy’s nowhere near playing his full hand yet.</p><p>“Oh, yeah. Forgot you’re his friendly little sock puppet now. Does he take you in the bathroom with him too? I saw you went with him to the kid’s house.”</p><p>If Stewy weren’t watching like a hawk, he’d miss the flash of panic that Kendall immediately covers with bluster. “You, uh, you keeping tabs on me? Do I have to send another text being like, sorry babe but we’re never, ever getting back together?”</p><p>Maybe he doesn’t know that’s a fucking Taylor Swift line. Stewy’ll give him the benefit of the doubt there, but now they’re going at each other, and god he <em>hates </em>that smug corporate-casual monotone Kendall thinks makes him sound authoritative. This is just like all those other times he’s lied to his face and expected Stewy to just swallow it like all the yes-men in his orbit. He narrows his eyes and doubles down. “I’m heartbroken. Was it a good trip in spite of it all? Mommy didn’t say anything too traumatising I hope?”</p><p>“It was a good trip. What do you care?”</p><p>“Maybe I’m a little nostalgic. You know, you and me, England: happier times.”</p><p>Kendall raises his eyebrows, scoffs and stands up. “Happy times?” He’s going for contempt or something, but he stands behind the arm of the sofa, putting more distance between himself and Stewy, and it’s definitely because Stewy just mentioned England, and holy shit he’s right, he’s really onto something here. “You mean the time I ruined my sister’s wedding because of you?”</p><p>Oh, <em>what </em>the fuck. “Yeah, tell me about it. Real dick move on my part, forcing you to join a takeover, and then I went a step further and just cruelly offered you the position of CEO? Must have been awful for you.”</p><p>“Fuck you. Not my fault your plan stank of sour milk.”</p><p>There’s an aggression here Stewy hasn’t really been getting from Kendall at all these past few months. Even when he was standing there telling him he would fuck his pets and kill his wife or whatever kind of mafia-movie shit he was trying to pull off, it didn’t have any heat in it, which honestly disturbed him more. But now it sounds like he means this, which is pissing him off more than he was expecting. He thought he’d found Kendall in a sad confessional mood. “You didn’t seem to think it sucked so much dick when you came up with it<em>, </em>asshole.”</p><p>“Sorry I realised I could do better than joining a threesome with you and the human fucking tapeworm over there. You know, uh, what are you getting out of that relationship exactly? His money really worth the syphilis?”</p><p>Is <em>that </em>what they’re spreading? Jesus, at least Sandy’s rumours had a little up-to-date flair about them. “Wow. Do you get off to this stuff in private, or something?” Stewy stands himself and goes up to Kendall, gets right in his face, and if Kendall was going for bravado here his game falls apart, because he backs away into his curtain windows, shrinking into his translucent reflection hovering over New York. Stewy advances, smelling blood. “Have you actually lied so hard to yourself about this that you believe it now? Bro, I thought you couldn’t get any more pathetic.”</p><p>“That so? Well go on man, tell me what you think of me.”</p><p>“Spoiled-ass spineless daddy’s boy who can’t see straight, let alone run a company.”</p><p>Kendall’s eyes are bright, his mouth spasms in an abortive smile. “Uh-huh. What else?”</p><p>Stewy’s seen this look on Kendall’s face before, too many times, and though he hates him right now enough to send him face first into that coffee table, the sight sets off old alarm bells. “You want me to keep going?” He pulls back a little, softens his voice. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing here, dude?”</p><p>“What are you talking about?”</p><p>“You wanna get punished so bad, maybe you should start with fessing up to the crime.”</p><p>It lands, hard. What little colour there was in Kendall’s face drains right out of it, and Stewy’s chest seizes up for a second.</p><p>“Wh-what, I don’t know what you’re…”</p><p>“I think you do. The kid?” He drops his voice low for it, lets it hit, and it does, quite visibly.</p><p>“How would – I don’t know what you are talking about, Stewy.” He spits it out almost convincingly, irritated and confused. But he already started with <em>how would, </em>and it’s clear on his face he knows the game is up. Stewy doesn’t reply with words, just lets Kendall process it in silence. “… Who spoke to you.”</p><p>“No one. It was a hunch I was fifty-fifty on, but thank you for confirming it.”</p><p>Kendall nods, swallows. At first it looks like he managed to brush it off, but then out of nowhere his face screws up and he covers it with a tense shaking hand. He slumps against the window, the words as defeated as feet dragged along gravel. “What… what do you want to hear from me, man?”</p><p>It’s rare that Kendall just asks like that, genuinely. Usually those <em>what do you wants </em>are just sales pitches disguised as olive branches, but not this time. So for once, Stewy has a chance to make demands on his own terms. “I want you, for once in your life, to drop the mind games, drop the transparent bullshit and just tell me the truth.” Kendall doesn’t move his hand from his face, if anything he makes himself smaller. His fire’s gone right out, and Stewy’s finding that most of his own has followed – and shit, he’s not crying over there, is he? “Hey, look at me,” he says, because Kendall can always respond to a direct order. He meets eyes with a wasteland, total desolation – but no tears, thank god. “It’s just <em>me, </em>man,” he urges quietly. “Come on, would that be so bad?”</p><p>“I- I-” He stutters uselessly for what might be a full minute. Stewy lets him work through it, lets Kendall realise for himself that there really is no way out of this one but the truth. Like waiting for an old printer to do its job, similar fucking noises too, until he breathes out sharply and says, “Okay. Fuck, okay.”</p><p>And out it comes. They migrate midway through the confession from the window to the sofa again, side by side. Stewy stares transfixed at Kendall’s face in profile. Kendall does not look his way once, talks slowly and monotonously as though the words are being mechanically wheeled from his mouth. The memory seems to consume him over the course of him telling it, maybe for the first time ever; his eyes are no longer looking at the room they’re sitting in. Stewy recognises that thousand-yard-stare from Kendall of a few months back. The tears, when they inevitably do come, go unchecked down his face, and he ploughs on through hitching breaths, until he reaches the morning after, the cold fuzzy dawn and the crashing realisation that it had been no dream, no mistake, and that kid really was dead. At this point he finally falters, his face collapses and he can’t speak anymore through the silent sobs that take him over. The break gives Stewy a chance to reflect on what he’s heard.</p><p>It’s… Well, after the initial euphoria of knowing he’s right and his intuition still shits all over everyone else’s, the actual reveal is a little underwhelming. Perhaps if Stewy had sat with the theory alone for a little longer, he’d have come up with something that looked a lot like this, but in the heat of the moment with the promise of potential scandal, he’d been hoping for something with a little more punch. Trust Kendall to make killing a man as limp-dicked as this – he says the waiter was the one who grabbed the wheel, so <em>did </em>he even kill him? According to a British court? Who the fuck even knows – and still act like it’s the worst deed mankind did ever commit.</p><p>It’s still bad though, obviously. It may not be a sensational murder, but in the right hands it could be just as damaging – the thought enters without Stewy’s permission and freezes him for a moment. He’s sitting there watching Kendall pour his heart out and already making plans in his head to rip it to pieces in the public eye, which surely has been his plan all along, but damn if it doesn’t feel exceptionally cold now.</p><p>Kendall clears his throat and finishes the tale, the fateful closed-door meeting that killed the plan and what was left of his soul in one fell swoop. Well, just his soul, maybe. The plan’s doing just fine without him. “My dad, he – he made it so no one would ever know. That was my reward.” He breathes out a dark little laugh. Finally his eyes glint up when he looks at Stewy. “I suppose you’re gonna take all this back to Sandy now.”</p><p>And now it’s Stewy who can’t look him in the eye. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t do that.”</p><p>“There isn’t one.” It’s thin, voiceless, like Kendall’s already a phantom and they’re just practising the eulogy for his funeral tomorrow. Stewy’s hands are clenched together over his knee, he realises; he releases the tension in them by running them through his hair. If Kendall weren’t already dead, he’d kill him, he thinks, he really would.</p><p>“You stupid… Why couldn’t you just be okay for one night, huh Ken?  Just one night and we would have been golden.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Yeah you fucking are.”</p><p>“About both. I’ll never… there’s nothing… There’s no atonement. For, you know.” He sniffs, wipes his eyes, takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Nothing can make it up, I realised that today I think properly for the first time. But… For the plan… You and me… You understand, now. And, and – I’m sorry.”</p><p>The thing is, Stewy does understand now. And the moment is less exciting and triumphant than he was picturing when he first arrived here. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You didn’t have a choice, did you?” He means it bitterly, a harsh call-back to every time he’s had this excuse thrown in his face. The First Law of Kendall: he can’t make choices. The Second Law: any choices he does make are bad ones. Yet now the words are out, they don’t sound like an accusation, but like forgiveness which, unfortunately, might be what he really means.</p><p>Certainly that’s how Kendall seems to take it, his eyes widening. And Stewy came here fully armed and ready to open his ex-best-friend’s throat without a second thought, he thought he was made of sterner stuff than this, but Kendall just looks so god damned helpless. So god damned <em>sorry. </em></p><p>He scoots over and pulls Kendall in for a one-armed hug without really thinking about it. It’s not something they do these days. He’s not making a big thing of it, and neither does Kendall, who sinks into Stewy’s shoulder, head uncomfortably heavy. “I’m a dead man,” he says muffled in his jacket.</p><p>“Don’t be so dramatic,” Stewy says, rolling his eyes. It’s Ken all over, making concussions out of the tiniest head bumps just like when they were kids. When they were knee-high, he’d kiss it better, since that was what the nanny did for him when he got a scrape. Kendall’s probably hoping he’ll do it again, playing the sympathy card which is especially low and dirty since it’s working.</p><p>“It’s true. Just don’t have the balls to finish the job.”</p><p>“Oh really? Want some help, is that it?”</p><p>“Maybe. I should be like, threatening you or begging you not to tell a soul or something, or at least regret opening my mouth, but man, I just-” he giggles, or Stewy thinks he does, hard to tell when he can’t see his face, “It feels good. I just wanna thank you.” He moves his hand over Stewy’s thigh, and well, okay, if that’s where they’re going with this he’ll take it over Kendall being morbid and snotty all over his shirt.</p><p>He finds Kendall’s hand with his own and guides it to his crotch. “You’re welcome.”</p><p>On those quiet rendezvous of the past few months, the ones he’s kept from Sandy, fucking has been a useful substitute for talking. It makes a change to do it without the undercurrent of bitterness, with Kendall having finally pulled down that wall stood between them, but Stewy’s not sure it’s a positive change. Kendall is eager to please, weirdly sombre in his approach to going down on him, like he’s determined to get it absolutely right – or to make it last. Maybe he really does think this is his last night on earth. Stewy should be more into it than he is. He’s gotten accustomed to hating Kendall and the sickening return of all his other feelings is not entirely welcome. They’re not in a place – Stewy can’t remember a time when they ever <em>were </em>– where this kind of slow pace, this affection, was allowed to exist solely for its own sake. There’s always some kind of catch. When he returns the favour for Kendall, feels those knobbly fingers thread through his hair and how incongruously cold they are, even though he’s always known Kendall was a quasi-anaemic cold-handed fucker, all he can think is that hollow voice, <em>dead man, dead man, dead man.</em></p><p>They stay in their positions a while afterwards, Kendall still on the ground with his head sort of nestled against the inside of Stewy’s leg. He’s so still and quiet and he’s drunk enough that Stewy worries he might just fall asleep there, so he gently kicks him away and gets to his feet.</p><p>“I’d better go,” he says, already half-way to the door. Kendall doesn’t move, and Stewy won’t look back to see whatever crushing look he’s got on his face. “Nice seeing you bro, as always.”</p><p>“Yeah. See ya.”</p><p>They can’t keep doing this, especially not now. The in-between states are the worst, and it was easier to see Kendall when he was just the enemy, just another warped tool in Logan’s arsenal. “Yeah, probably not,” Stewy says, quieter and more hurried than he intends, right before he sees himself out.</p><p>--</p><p>That night in his dreams, they’re both sitting near the edge of a breath-taking cliff, overlooking a shining bay, the tide crashing languidly into the bottom of their fifty-foot-high rocky seat. He doesn’t recognise the spot, and there are no landmarks to identify it, but somehow Stewy knows they are in Japan. The green mountains across the water peer solemnly at them; Stewy reads some holiday book while Kendall sunbathes beside him, both of them perfectly silent.</p><p>It’s lovely, until it isn’t. He glances over at Kendall, who’s moved to sit cross-legged, still as a monk, face blank behind those dumb sunglasses. The heat is almost intolerable; they have both taken their shirts off and Kendall is sweating like a pig, not even wiping his brow, just sitting there motionless and expressionless. Perfect serenity. Stewy becomes overtaken with a sudden fury he can’t quite make sense of. It’s the thought of Kendall musing on his life, on <em>their </em>life, maybe the take-over bid he couldn’t hack, more likely Logan Roy or drowning – and doing it with such incredible calm over there.</p><p>If Stewy were a Japanese haiku master, he could articulate all this bubbling confusion inside into something beautiful. He’s not, though, and though in the waking world he prides himself on keeping his cool in situations of remarkable pressure, here in dreams, the two of them isolated in such a peaceful, non-threatening environment causes him to scream out loud. Kendall doesn’t react; Stewy barely understands the words coming from his own mouth. He’s not even sure they’re addressed to his traitorous, cowardly, fucked up mess of a third-oldest friend.</p><p>Eventually Stewy lunges for him, grips him by the back of his neck and pulls him a little towards him. It surprises a small gasp out of him, but nothing more, and Kendall does not try to get out of his grasp when he hisses in his ear, “What if I pushed you in the sea right now?”</p><p>Kendall sighs, and Stewy feels his muscles relax under his fingers, like he’s a cat being held by the scruff. “Yeah,” he says, looking straight ahead. “That sounds nice. Go ahead.”</p><p>They sit for a few moments frozen like this, Stewy not daring to think one more thought lest something terrible happens that he can’t stop, trapped by dream-logic. By the time he wakes up it feels like they’ve sat there for hours, Stewy’s hand aching being held at the nape of Kendall’s neck for so long. Awake, he lets himself imagine what could have happened.</p><p>It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to toss Kendall from his high place into those swirling pools he clearly craves. The man isn’t built like a quarterback. He can picture the scene, kind of comical: that wiry body tumbling through the air, the black dye-job winking out of sight under the waves. But something tells him that if he did it, there’s no way he’d bob back up to the surface like he escaped from that waiter’s car. His chest twists and untwists again and again, a nauseating sensation. Kendall has always trusted Stewy far too much, almost always to his own detriment, each time showing that wounded surprise on his face. It’s an unfair expression when Stewy never made any promises of protection. Being trusted with Kendall’s destruction feels worse, however.</p><p>He plays through the other scenario. Pulling him back from the ledge, tackling him to the ground sharp with pebbles. “You moron,” he’d say. “Give me one reason, I said, and you were supposed to say because I’m your <em>friend. </em>You always pulled that arrogant approach before, why not now? You don’t have the pain threshold to be a martyr, Ken” and then they’d fuck or whatever on the cliff, figure it out in a neat little cathartic display.</p><p>He gets up. Maybe he’s wrong about Kendall, maybe he’s right – but who cares? Generally speaking his life has gone far better when he <em>doesn’t </em>design his choices around the confusing light-sucking void shape Kendall makes in the world. They have a proxy battle to win, and while Sandy’s cool as a cucumber filled with assurances that they’re right on schedule and the shareholders know which side of their bread’s buttered et cetera, et cetera, he’s not 100%. And Stewy’s even less sure, but now he has ammunition that really would tip them over the edge into a clear lead, and wouldn’t it just be better for everyone? A clean, mostly bloodless victory. Skipping the tug-of-war bit, wrangling shareholder for shareholder over the next three years worth of meetings. Logan’s reputation forever consigned to the trash heap. Kendall nailed to the cross just where he wants to be.</p><p>“So,” Sandy says. “You said you had something you wanted to share with me?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Stewy says. Licks his lips, makes a snap decision, <em>eeny meeny miney mo, </em>“About our prize Irish bull.”</p><p>“Jack? You think he might waver?”</p><p>“He’s getting sweet-talked, that’s for sure. There are talks of reconciliation, re-forging the old family-friend bonds…” He’ll use it one day, he promises to himself. It’ll work better as a last resort, when things aren’t going so great for them. It’s a ready-loaded, ready-cocked gun he can fire at any moment, and now just isn’t the right time.</p><p>Stewy tells himself at the end of each day like a prayer: he’ll shoot without hesitation when that time comes. He thinks of Kendall and tries his best to see only the magazine covers, the cocky empty smile. Not the trusting hands at the back of his head, not the crumpled mess of flesh and blood and desperation wrapped around him. When he can manage that, he almost believes it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"Remember that there is guilt in loving. And remember too that in loving there is something sacred."</p><p>I had to write an essay on Kokoro half-way through writing this and had some severe emotions about it which spilled into this. Hence the somewhat unlikely knowledge and interest in Japanese literature on Stewy's part, and that dream sequence which was pretty much lifted from the book. I hope this appeals! And I hope that in season 3 Kendall gets to spill his guts to someone about the manslaughter cause god the silent suffering in season 2 is almost too much to take</p></blockquote></div></div>
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